by Mitchell Plitnick

On Monday, I attended the National Leadership Assembly for Israel. The gathering was more than a little disquieting.

Big names were in attendance and addressed the audience including National Security Adviser Susan Rice, House Speaker John Boehner, Former Chair of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, current [...]]]> via LobeLog

by Mitchell Plitnick

On Monday, I attended the National Leadership Assembly for Israel. The gathering was more than a little disquieting.

Big names were in attendance and addressed the audience including National Security Adviser Susan Rice, House Speaker John Boehner, Former Chair of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, current Chairman Ed Royce, Senator Ben Cardin, Ambassador Dennis Stephens of Canada, and Israeli Ambassador to the US Ron Dermer. Leaders of the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the Jewish Council for Public Affairs and other groups also all spoke. One of the most troubling aspects was that they mostly all had the same thing to say.

Some speakers went further than others. Paul De Vries, the evangelical preacher and president of the New York Divinity School, called Hamas “evil” and said the Islamic State was Hamas’ “twin.” While most statements were not that stark, every speaker placed full blame for all the casualties in Gaza on Hamas. Israel was defended without an ounce of criticism and not even a hint from anyone that maybe, just maybe, the deaths of hundreds of Palestinian children in less than one month could mean that Israel is not taking enough care to avoid harming civilians.

The vice chairman of the conference of presidents, Malcolm Hoenlein, summed it up this way: “Hamas exists to kill; Israel sometimes has to kill to exist. (There must be) no more pressure on Israel to do what it thinks is not in its best interest.”

But it was the conference of presidents’ chairman (who is not as powerful as Hoenlein), Robert Sugarman, who really chilled my bones.

“We are not there,” Sugarman said. “We are not experiencing the rocket attacks. Whatever our personal views may be, we must continue to support the decisions of the government (of Israel). And we must continue to urge our government to support them as well.”

Sugarman knows his audience. There can be no doubt that this particular audience entered the room in passionate support of Israel. He was speaking to the broader Jewish and pro-Israel Christian community across the country. And he was speaking to something worth noting.

Why, one wonders, did Sugarman feel a need to address “whatever our personal feelings are?” What he understands is that this onslaught is making pro-Israel liberals uncomfortable. Yes, they’re uniformly concerned about Hamas’ ability to keep ringing the sirens not just in southern Israeli cities like Sderot and Ashkelon, but also in much of Israel, including Tel Aviv, Haifa and Jerusalem. Yes, they’re worried about their friends and relatives.

Yet they can’t avoid the images of devastated Gaza on their televisions and computers. Despite continuing anti-Palestinian bias, the tone of the media coverage of this chapter of the confrontation between Israel and Hamas is markedly different from what we’ve seen in the past. Many more images of injured children, destroyed houses, and general carnage are reaching people, and they’re disturbing quite a few who, in the past, found it much easier to give Israel unequivocal support.

Sugarman is worried. He knows very well that when pro-Israel voices become critics of Israeli policies, the Conference of Presidents and, yes, even AIPAC are weakened. He is not sanguine about the turning tide of opinion. He is not deluding himself that the lock-step support of Congress behind every one of Israel’s claims and actions in this onslaught is invulnerable. US policy changes only at a glacial pace unless a calamity pushes it forward. Congress, certainly in this case, will change even more slowly. But Sugarman realizes that such a change can come as Israel portrays itself as ever more heartless, ever more militant and ever more right-wing.

Sugarman is also aware that the hardcore supporters of the most extreme Israeli policies are not the heart and soul of the punch that the Conference of Presidents and AIPAC carry in Washington. Many of the masses from whom they raise money, whose votes and donations Congress values, are essentially liberals who have always had to balance their values with their support for Israel and the occupation.

That support was initially shaken way back in 1987 with the first intifada. I would argue that this, among other factors, was perhaps the key reason that the United States and, soon after, Israel, changed its tactics and embraced a “peace process.” But since the second intifada and the 9/11 attacks, a much more militaristic and rigid rejectionism has gripped both countries, culminating in what we have today where the Israeli government openly, albeit informally, rejects the idea of a two-state solution and the United States accordingly offers Netanyahu unwavering support.

But the Lebanon War in 2006, Operation Cast Lead in 2008-09 and, most powerfully, the current attacks on Gaza have all produced images of Palestinian civilians — women and children — being killed and maimed by a massive Israeli onslaught that appears wildly out of proportion to the stated objectives. The more liberal-minded people among pro-Israel Christians and Jews in the US and Europe also often read Israeli newspapers. There they find that Israel knew about Hamas’ tunnels for quite some time and did nothing — and, not to be lost in the shuffle, that Hamas also didn’t use them for any sort of militant or terrorist activity until after this operation started.

That’s what Sugarman is worried about. But what I worry about is his proposed remedy.

Sugarman tells his listeners not to listen to their conscience or their own judgment but to blindly follow Israel over this Solid Cliff.

This chills me on three levels. First and foremost, as a person of conscience and a critical thinker, mindlessly following the decision of any government is anathema to democracy. People, not politicians, must be the ultimate arbiter of policy. Granted, that’s not the way the world is, but it is the world we must work towards.

I also feel horror at this message as a citizen of the United States. Our foreign policy has rarely been humane or even sensible. That’s not limited to the Middle East by any means, although it’s probably most focused there these days. But the idea that we should surrender any foreign policy decisions to the judgment of Israel, a country that has moved very far to the right in the past fifteen years and which is embroiled in a vexing, long-term ethnic conflict is simply terrifying and unacceptable. If the United States ever decides to really remove itself from this conflict — and that means ending our obstruction of UN actions that are critical of Israel and stopping the $3.5 billion per year of military aid as well as our many joint military operations — then there would be a case for letting Israel handle its business without US interference. Until then, the responsibility of the United States is clear even if it has failed to live up to it at every turn. That’s something that needs to be addressed seriously, rather than by just exacerbating the problem.

Finally and most personally, I am filled with dread by Sugarman’s call as a Jew. Is there a more pernicious anti-Semitic trope than that of dual loyalty? Yet here is the leader of a major Jewish organization calling for Jews and other US citizens to subsume their country’s foreign policy to the whims of the Israeli government. Such a call is anathema to the very essence of the Judaism I and many others, including many who support Israel even in this onslaught, have come to embrace. Judaism was founded on critical thinking and asking tough questions. More than that, can there be better fuel for those who only wish harm upon Jews wherever we may be than for so prominent a figure as Sugarman to call for a US policy amounting to nothing more or less than “do exactly what Israel tells you to do, no questions asked?”

Sugarman’s words should be a wake-up call for US citizens about the weakness of Israel’s case in its repeated devastation of Gaza. It should also be ringing in the ears of Jews everywhere. Even if you can’t be concerned about hundreds of dead civilians in Gaza, you can probably still realize that it’s not just Netanyahu who is increasing hatred of Jews around the world. So-called “Jewish leaders” like Sugarman are also fomenting massive anti-Semitism that will eventually come back to haunt us all.

Photo: Palestinians walk past the collapsed minaret of a destroyed mosque in Gaza City, on July 30 2014 after it was hit in an overnight Israeli strike. Overnight Israeli bombardments killed “dozens” of Palestinians in Gaza, including at least 16 at a UN school, medics said, on day 23 of the Israel-Hamas conflict. Credit: Ashraf Amra

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Turnover in top US foreign policy and national security jobs can often be a “good thing” — for the nation and the world. New brooms at least start out with a different look at the world, its problems, challenges to the United States, and choices about what to do.

This also [...]]]> by Robert E. Hunter

Turnover in top US foreign policy and national security jobs can often be a “good thing” — for the nation and the world. New brooms at least start out with a different look at the world, its problems, challenges to the United States, and choices about what to do.

This also often happens when the presidency changes, though that time is also fraught with the downside of newness — what in Washington jargon is sometimes referred to as the need first to find one’s way to the washroom, in addition to getting to know and adjust to one’s new colleagues.

The foreign policies of those leaving office (especially if the party in control of the presidency also changes) are remembered as almost universally bad — the partisan spin; though within months, the old gang is understood to have not got things all that wrong, given the (necessarily) limited latitude that the US has, even as the world’s most powerful country.

Change at the top in the midst of an administration is a different thing. Even if a new team has a will to change things — note, for instance, Secretary of State John Kerry’s hyperactive efforts to restart talks between Israel and the Palestinians — existing policies and practices already have momentum, or a quality of bureaucratic inertia and integration within Washington politics.

At the same time, however, members of the new team have an advantage in that they have likely already been working together, developing their relationships and learning how the government “really works.”

Thus it is with Susan Rice’s moving from her position as US Ambassador to the United Nations to National Security Advisor in the White House and her replacement, from the current National Security Council staff, Samantha Power. Both have the critical quality of lengthy (and trusted) associations with President Obama, one of the most invaluable “coins of the realm” in Washington power politics and position.

Instant commentary has largely focused on the foreign policy activism of both officials newly at the top. And that has apparently been true — up until now.

In 2011, both were reportedly in the camp, along with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, credited with tipping the president over the edge into supporting Britain and France in their efforts to topple Libya’s Muammar Qaddafi.

While that account is most likely exaggerated, the key point is that Rice/Power’s activism for “humanitarian interventions,” as several commentators have opined, will be sharply constrained by a more basic fact of life: Obama has made clear he is not about to trade his ending US military engagement in Iraq and sharply reducing it in Afghanistan for more wars in the Middle East.

Thus Obama has resisted pressures from US hawks and Israel to make war on Iran, though he has given hostages to fortune by accepting “red lines,” of some indefinite nature, along with his continued claims that “all options are on the table”.

In other words, he has made a critical war-peace decision conditional on Iranian and Israeli restraint — never a good place for a US president to be — but so far his bet (a handful of aces or bluffing with a busted flush) has not been called.

Obama has also been so reluctant to get the US more deeply engaged in the Syrian civil war that it is unlikely that the change in personnel will produce a decisive difference. At the margins, perhaps — and in those details lurk a hundred devils.

It’s also important to understand what Obama has been about up until now. It appears, at least to this writer, that he sees his legacy as domestic; summarized in two words: economy and equality.

This is quite an agenda and one that, if considerably advanced, would mark him as a major figure in US history, a legitimate legatee of FDR and LBJ. This inference contains a lesson for engagement abroad, however: Obama should accomplish what the US has to do, but keep this from interfering with the pursuit of his domestic agenda.

This can include accomplishing abroad tasks critical to that purpose, such as working to restore confidence in the global financial system, launching a Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), and recognizing the growth of the Economic Beasts of Asia: China, the Greater, and India, the Lesser.

Hence the “pivot” to Asia slogan, or the less-colorful, “rebalancing”. But so far there’s only slogans with limited policy substance and certainly no coherence across the different instruments of power and influence and US domestic fiefdoms.

Keeping the world from interfering unduly with Obama’s own “rebalancing” or primary attention to his domestic agenda (which, on the economic side, is actually a demand, given the mess he was handed in 2009) — was arguably the principal job of the foreign policy team for the First Term.

Tom Donilon, the outgoing National Security Advisor, was not a foreign policy mastermind, but in the Obama scheme of things he didn’t need to be.

Helping Obama with the running down of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, making sure that two more didn’t begin, maintaining a pretty tight hold on policy overall, and keeping foreign policy to the extent possible out of the 2012 presidential campaign, Donilon did his job.

But trying to put the world “on hold” has now run its course.

For more than two decades, the United  States has in effect been eating its seed corn in terms of strategic assessment, thought and planning for the post-Cold War world.

Following George H.W. Bush’s two signal foreign policy achievements of wrapping up the Cold War in Europe (as well as setting the basis, followed by Bill Clinton, for writing finis to the European Civil War of 1870-1991) and showing that the US could and would use its unmatched and unmatchable military power to expel Saddam Hussein from Kuwait in 1991, the US has been acting as though its great reserves of power and influence can substitute for thinking about a truly new construction of global relationships.

While there has been an attempt to understand that, in the new world, working with others is absolutely necessary, along with sharing the right to make the Big Decisions and melding effectively military, diplomatic and economic instruments, not much has been done to build on that basis.

Iraq and Afghanistan have been major cases in point. While “kinetic” power has largely done its job, the work of economic and political development has largely failed.

And in Afghanistan, not long after the 2014 end of the lead role for Western forces, the world’s verdict is likely to be — both there and in much-more-important Pakistan — Mission Not-Accomplished.

Much can be said about the various tasks that Susan Rice will now assume in the White House, but nowhere with more immediate importance than in regard to the Middle East (and Southwest Asia).

There, three administrations in a row have not managed to forge an integrated approach and strategy, but have tended to see the bits and pieces of the region from North Africa to the Hindu Kush as just that — bits and pieces.

As much as anything else, domestic politics has driven much of US policy in the region, in particular the US part of the long-running confrontation with Iran, and there is no indication that this will change.

The US still has not been willing to put “all options on the table” by recognizing that the legitimate security needs of three counties — the US, Israel, and Iran — all need to be considered.

The failure to create a viable strategy toward Iran and its nuclear program, short of the president’s hand being called at some point regarding military attack, was underscored this past week when he signed an executive order further ratcheting up sanctions.

He did this a mere 10 days before the Iranian presidential elections on June 14^th.

If someone in Washington were trying to think up a way to ensure that the worst of the worst will be elected — to the extent we could have any impact — it would be hard to think of a more effective tactic.

(Consider, for instance, how the US electorate would have responded if, say, China or Russia had rattled sabers in 2008 just when “dovish” Barack Obama was running against “hawkish” John McCain).

Then there is Syria, in civil war, with a rolling civil war across the region, where the US has got itself smack in the middle of age-old competitions and hatreds between Sunnis and Shi’as, and where some of America’s closest Sunni allies are deeply involved in supplying weapons (and ideologies bitterly and aggressively hostile to the West) to the so-called rebels.

And at least in public, there is not even a hint that the administration has been planning what it will do if Syria’s Bashar al-Assad is removed from power…or if he stays.

In either event, there will be another product of the ripples of the religious and geopolitical rivalries that began spreading across the region when the US dropped a great big bolder on Iraq in 2003, thus ending three centuries of minority Sunni dominance over the majority Shi’as, and thus leading Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey and others to try righting the region’s Sunni-Shi’a balance through Syrian regime change.

When it comes to what the new National Security Advisor should do, the first step is obvious: Ms. Rice should assess the NSC team she is inheriting and ensure she has first-rate players in terms of capacity to engage in strategic thinking and relate systematically the world’s apples to its oranges.

Whether Susan Rice is herself a top-rate strategic thinker and leader, able to do what has to be done in terms of analysis and craft, is not yet clear; we must hope that she will prove to have these skills.

In any event, she needs to get the best people possible for her Senior Staff, where it is a great stretch of the imagination to argue that the Obama Administration has either sought out the best, from within and without the government, or employed them effectively.

This is at a time when the NSC staff has become bloated to being the largest ever: effective, perhaps to meet the Donilon task of having enough people-power to assert control over the rest of the foreign policy apparatus, but an oxymoron in regard to serious strategic thinking.

The rule of thumb (demonstrated when Henry Kissinger, Zbigniew Brzezinski and Brent Scowcroft were National Security Advisors) is that capacity for strategic analysis, thought, planning and policy tends to exist in inverse proportion to the number of people involved in doing it.

In sum, shifts in global power and influence mean that we must learn to think our way toward the future.

In particular, as has happened to every US president since Harry Truman, the Middle East demands that the president and his team get it right or suffer unfortunate consequences.

As the top official closest to the president, both in physical distance (a few yards) and in prior association, this buck stops with Susan Rice.

via IPS News

In a reshuffle of top foreign policy posts in his second term, U.S. President Barack Obama Wednesday announced that his controversial and blunt-spoken U.N. ambassador, Susan Rice, will replace Tom Donilon as his national security adviser.

He also announced that another longtime aide on the [...]]]> by Jim Lobe

via IPS News

In a reshuffle of top foreign policy posts in his second term, U.S. President Barack Obama Wednesday announced that his controversial and blunt-spoken U.N. ambassador, Susan Rice, will replace Tom Donilon as his national security adviser.

He also announced that another longtime aide on the National Security Council staff who began working with Obama when he was still a freshman senator from Illinois, Samantha Power, will replace Rice as Washington’s U.N. envoy, a cabinet position.

The moves, which had been anticipated but whose precise timing was uncertain, are considered unlikely to signal major changes in U.S. policy, despite the fact that both Power and Rice have been associated with the more-interventionist tendencies within the Democratic Party.

“I don’t think this change in personnel marks a turning point in policy,” said Charles Kupchan, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.

“From the get-go, foreign policy under Obama has been run from the (White House) Oval Office, and Obama’s brain trust has included primarily a small inner circle of folks that cut their teeth on the (2008 presidential) campaign. Susan Rice and Samantha Power have been part of that inner circle all along.”

“I see the move as a confident second-term president promoting people who will be more visible,” noted Heather Hurlburt, director of the National Security Network (NSN), a think tank considered close to the administration.

“Donilon’s great strength was his managerial skill and willingness to work behind the scenes. Rice’s public persona is one of her great strengths, and I’m sure the White House will use it.”

“Power will be one of the people most knowledgeable about the UN that the U.S. has ever sent to represent us there, and that’s quite a statement about the U.S. commitment to that organisation’s potential,” she added, noting that Power’s knowledge is based on her years as a journalist and author covering the world body and some of its most controversial and difficult missions.

Late last year, Rice was considered Obama’s first choice to replace Hillary Clinton as secretary of state but withdrew from consideration after Republicans accused her of deliberately misleading the public about events surrounding the killing of the U.S. ambassador to Libya and three other U.S. personnel in last September in Benghazi.

She will be Obama’s third national security adviser. Unlike secretary of state or U.N. ambassador, the national security adviser is not subject to Senate confirmation.

Unlike Rice, Donilon, or Power, the first national security, Gen. James Jones (ret.), was never close to Obama and tended to see his work primarily as coordinating the advice of the other top national-security officials, notably the secretaries of defence and state and the director of national intelligence.

After two years, Donilon, Jones’ deputy and a Democratic political heavyweight, replaced him, moving quickly to concentrate foreign policy making in the White House and greatly increasing the size and workload of the NSC staff.

A top aide to Secretary of State Warren Christopher during President Bill Clinton’s first term, Donilon is given credit for a number of major strategic initiatives – most recently, promoting this week’s informal and potentially historic California summit between Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping.

Indeed, one prominent NSC historian, David Rothkopf, wrote on foreignpolicy.com Wednesday that his “greatest contribution was his strategic mindset” that led to “…a restoration of balance to the U.S. national security agenda, a move away from the conflict-dominated view of the years right after 9/11 to one that is more global and has room to consider opportunities, new alliances, and new challenges more effectively.”

If Donilon was more inclined to the more non-interventionist stance of his mentor, Christopher, Rice is best seen as the protégée of Clinton’s second-term and more-interventionist Madeleine Albright whom she has known since childhood and served as assistant secretary of state for African Affairs.

Haunted by Washington’s refusal to act during the 1994 Rwandan genocide (when she worked on Clinton’s NSC), Rice, as well as Power, has been a leading exponent of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P), the doctrine that the international community has a responsibility to intervene in order to prevent genocide or mass atrocities if the otherwise sovereign state is unwilling or unable to do so.

“Power and Rice are smart, tough, and experienced. But both are firmly in the interventionist consensus that has guided U.S. foreign policy for many years, and neither is going to go outside the mainstream on any controversial issues,” Stephen Walt, a prominent international-relations professor at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, told IPS in an email message.

Citing R2P, both Rice and Power reportedly played an important role in persuading Obama to intervene in the civil war in Libya, although, significantly, Rice sided with Donilon against other cabinet officials and CIA director Gen. David Petraeus who recommended a limited military intervention on behalf of rebels in the Syrian civil war late last year, according to numerous published reports.

“Everyone knows there have been disagreements on the team, and the person who resolves them is Barack Hussein Obama. People debate this as if Obama had no opinions on these issues,” noted Hurlburt. “But second-term presidents evolve and get more active (in foreign policy). If that happens, that will be primarily because Obama wants to go there.”

One area in which there could be a major difference is managerial. While concentrating power in the White House, Donilon, a high-priced lawyer outside government, consistently ensured that relevant cabinet secretaries were continually consulted and their policy recommendations presented to the president.

Known for driving his staff particularly hard and making little secret of his unhappiness if in his judgement they failed to perform, he also maintained a deliberately low profile and a carefully calculated demeanour.

While a loyal team player – and the graceful manner in which she withdrew from consideration as secretary of state gained wide admiration and no doubt clinched her claim to her new post – Rice is flamboyant and impulsive by comparison, particularly in her preference for blunt, if colourful — sometimes even scatological — language, a habit that many of her U.N. colleagues found off-putting or difficult to get used to.

“She can be quite charming and likeable, and she is awfully smart,” CFR’s emeritus president Leslie Gelb wrote in the Daily Beast Wednesday. “And unlike Donilon, she often rushes to judgment, and then digs in. She’ll have to learn to count to 100, I mean 1000, before making up her mind, and meantime, listen to different views carefully.” He also noted that “she has a temper that needs tempering.”

Indeed, some sources who asked not to be named predicted that she faced major challenges in working out collegial relationships with Pentagon chief Chuck Hagel and Secretary of State John Kerry – both of whom are also new to their jobs and would be expected to make life difficult for her if they felt she was hogging the media spotlight or failing to consult adequately with their departments in formulating options for the president.

“No shrinking violet is she,” one insider told IPS.

In that respect, according to Rothkopf, she could be greatly aided by Donilon’s former deputy and Obama’s new chief of staff, Denis McDonough, a foreign policy wonk in his own right and one of the very few people who are considered as personally close to Obama as Rice herself.

by Peter Jenkins

Divining the Obama administration’s foreign policy intentions can be intellectually challenging.

At the beginning of February the US Vice President appeared to be offering Iran an opportunity to enter into bilateral talks on the nuclear dispute.

Three weeks ago the US was encouraging its European allies to review [...]]]> via Lobe Log

by Peter Jenkins

Divining the Obama administration’s foreign policy intentions can be intellectually challenging.

At the beginning of February the US Vice President appeared to be offering Iran an opportunity to enter into bilateral talks on the nuclear dispute.

Three weeks ago the US was encouraging its European allies to review their opening position for the upcoming Almaty talks and be open to demanding a bit less of Iran while offering a little more.

Two weeks ago the Secretary of State was hailing the outcome of the Almaty meeting as useful and expressing hope that serious engagement could lead to a comprehensive agreement.

Yet last week in New York, addressing a UN Security Council committee, Ambassador Susan Rice, a member of President Obama’s cabinet, was speaking of Iran as though nothing had changed since the end of January.

There are many clever people working for the Obama administration. So I suppose we must assume that this apparent incoherence is in fact part of a highly sophisticated stratagem, which will deliver what most — though not all — of us want: peace in our time.

Any, though, who are less inclined to think more of US officials than former British diplomats do, should be forgiven for feeling perplexed — perhaps even a little worried — by Ambassador Rice’s remarks.

Let me try to illustrate that by reviewing a few of her points from the position of a Non-Aligned (NAM) member of the UN. Of course, a former British diplomat cannot hope to imagine the thoughts of NAM counterparts with pin-point accuracy. But I have rubbed shoulders with NAM diplomats for a sufficient number of years, and listened to enough of their intergovernmental interventions, to have a rough idea of what impression Ambassador Rice will have made.

“The Iranian nuclear issue remains one of the gravest threats to international security” she intoned. Really? I, as a NAM diplomat, am not sure Iran has ever violated the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), and am certain Iran has not violated that treaty’s most important provisions. Surely North Korea, which has just conducted its third nuclear test, is a greater threat? And what about Israel, which possesses hundreds of dangerous weapons of mass destruction, as well as sophisticated long-range delivery systems? What about India and Pakistan, which came close to nuclear blows in 2002? What about Israel’s refusal to withdraw from territories it has occupied for over 45 years, a standing affront to Arab self-respect? What about the potential consequences of Western-sponsored civil war in Syria, civil unrest in Iraq, and NATO withdrawal from Afghanistan?

“We meet at a time of growing risks.” Is that so? Surely the latest International Atomic Energy Agency’s (IAEA) report suggests that Iran is being careful to deny Israel’s Prime Minister a pretext to draw the US into a war of aggression?

“[Iran is] obstruct[ing] the IAEA’s investigation into the program’s possible military dimension by refusing to grant access to the Parchin site.” Well, yes. But surely the question of access to Parchin is legally more open to dispute than this implies? And hasn’t the US intelligence community concluded that Iran abandoned its nuclear weapons program ten years ago? Don’t the IAEA’s suspicions relate to experiments that may have taken place more than ten years ago and that would have involved only a few grams of nuclear material? Why all the fuss?

“More alarming still…Iran is now….installing hundreds of second-generation centrifuges”. Why is this so alarming? Surely Iran has declared this installation to the IAEA, will submit the machines’ operations to frequent IAEA inspection and intends to use them to produce low-enriched uranium for which Iran will account? Developing centrifuge technology under IAEA safeguards is not a treaty violation.

“These actions are unnecessary and thus provocative.” Since when have states been entitled to dictate what is necessary to one another? Some states certainly don’t see these actions as provocative.

“[Iran’s missile launches] allow Iran to develop a technology that [could] constitute an intolerable threat to peace and security.” Iran has no treaty obligation to refrain from developing missile technology. Many other states have done so. And, didn’t I (NAM diplomat) read recently on the US Congressional Research Service that Iran is unlikely to have an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) by 2015?

“Working together, we can continue to clarify for Iran the consequences of its actions and show Iran the benefits of choosing cooperation over provocation.” My, that sounds patronising, even a little threatening! Will it encourage Iranians to believe that the latest US offer of engagement is sincere?

So what, US readers may feel. The US can say what it likes; it’s a Great Power. Yes, but a power that has the misfortune to be great in an age when greatness confers responsibility for nurturing a law-based international system.

It doesn’t do much good to that system for US ambassadors to sound unreasonable, alarmist, bereft of a sense of proportion and perhaps a little inclined to double standards. Good leaders lead from the middle, not one of the extremities.

And could it be the case that the US is a Great Power that needs a diplomatic solution to an intractable dispute? Neither the Pentagon nor the US public wants another war at this stage. Sanctions have been hurting innocent Iranians but benefitting Iran’s Revolutionary Guards and conservative elite, who feel confident of their ability to contain popular discontent.

When one is running out of options, negotiating theorists suggest that building trust in one’s good faith is a better tactic than dishing out hyperbole and half-truths.

Photo Credit: US Embassy New Delhi/Flickr 

I’m pleased that President Obama is reportedly enlarging his list of possible candidates for senior national-security posts to Republicans, notably former Sen. Chuck Hagel, as reported by Josh Rogin, the Cable Guy, on yesterday. As has been pointed out by more than one commentator over the last few years, Obama’s [...]]]> via Lobe Log

I’m pleased that President Obama is reportedly enlarging his list of possible candidates for senior national-security posts to Republicans, notably former Sen. Chuck Hagel, as reported by Josh Rogin, the Cable Guy, on yesterday. As has been pointed out by more than one commentator over the last few years, Obama’s basic foreign-policy views don’t seem all that far from the kind of fundamentally realist views pursued by the administration of President George H.W. Bush, and particularly his two leading advisers, Brent Scowcroft and James Baker — both of whom opposed the Iraq War — not to mention Colin Powell, who served under Bush I as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. As I understand it, Obama consults Powell, who will forever regret not standing up to the Cheney-Rumsfeld-neocon cabal, on foreign-policy matters on a not infrequent basis. Moreover, realist Republicans — the bane of neo-conservatives — have always been far more tough-minded about Israel and the distinction between Israeli and U.S. national interests in the Middle East than Democrats. Because Israel and the Middle East are certain to be central to the foreign-policy success or failure of his second term, that kind of tough-mindedness should be especially appealing to Obama. So why Obama would only consider Democrats — and a particularly partisan and polarizing one like Susan Rice — for secretary of state when he has so much on his domestic agenda already has been very puzzling to me. A Republican in tune with Obama’s views could be particularly effective at running interference — especially with Congress — on the foreign-policy front, especially with respect to the Middle East.

Hagel has already been mentioned, but there are other possibilities.

My personal favorite is retiring Indiana Sen. Dick Lugar. As with the Bush I administration veterans, skeptics will immediately cite his age — 80 — as a disqualifying factor, and I understand he does have some minor ambulatory difficulties these days. (Recall, however, that FDR ran the U.S. from a wheelchair for 12 years.) But as is shown by this video of Lugar’s recent acceptance of an award from the Friends Committee on National Legislation — especially after the 15-minute mark when he takes questions — his mind is as sharp as a tack; his knowledge encyclopedic; his access to and interest in foreign leaders impressive; and his concern about the general state of the world, including the have-nots (listen to his discussion about Egypt) seemingly quite genuine.

Described by the New Yorker as “Obama’s favorite Republican,” Lugar defended Obama’s policies during the presidential campaign on Israel, Iran, and China, among other issues, warning back in September that, “We’re really going to have hell to pay,” if the U.S. or Israel carries out an attack against Iran. And given his negotiating skills (his main presentation in that video addresses all the WMD diplomacy he has carried out as follow-through on the 1992 Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction Act), his venerable age and breadth of experience, and invariably civil and engaging demeanor, all but the most rabidly right-wing Republican lawmakers are likely to show deference in his presence.

It is true that Lugar has too often followed his party’s leadership; the worst example, of course, was going along with the Iraq invasion (as did Kerry and Clinton, of course), although he did express pretty strong reservations at the time and became one of the first Republicans to break with Bush’s strategy by calling for a quick withdrawal. (Of course, Hagel was far ahead of him on Iraq). He was also a strong supporter of the most pertinent recommendations of the Iraq Study Group which, of course, was c0-chaired by Baker and Lugar’s fellow-Hoosier, former Rep. Lee Hamilton. I remember back in the 80′s when he defied his party and Ronald Reagan by leading the drive to pass the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act of 1986 and then to override Reagan’s veto. To so flagrantly break with the president was not only politically courageous. It also demonstrated a sensitivity to the aspirations of what was then called the “Third World” that was and remains all-too-rare among Republicans and an understanding that being a foreign-policy “realist” in the late 20th century required factoring popular grassroots movements into the balance-of-power calculations made by governments operating in an international system. His early determination that it made no sense to try to sustain or even reform Marcos dictatorship in the face of the “People Power” movement showed a similar awareness. Moreover, from the early 1980′s, he worked to temper the aggressiveness of Reagan’s Central America policies; in stark contrast to many of his Republican colleagues, his door was always open to human rights, peace, and church groups during the period.

Add to all this Lugar’s consistent support for international treaties and conventions, particularly in the arms control and disarmament field — a major personal priority of Obama’s — as well as his backing for legislation designed to address global warming and climate change, food security, and global health, and Obama would have someone who appears almost entirely in tune with him on just about all of the critical issues he faces in the second term. A highly respected Republican with 36 years in the Senate, most of them on the Foreign Relations Committee — who better to have your back when it comes to dealing with Congress? (An excellent profile of his “legacy” can be found in this National Interest piece by John Shaw.)

There are, of course, other Republicans worth considering. Former Utah Gov. and Obama’s ambassador to China, John Huntsman, certainly falls into the realist camp and would probably make a very effective secretary of state, especially in overseeing the much-ballyhooed “pivot” to Asia. But the fact that he served under Obama, his lack of Congressional ties and experience, as well as his failure to gain any traction for his candidacy in the presidential primary campaign, would likely combine to make him far less persuasive to fellow-Republicans than Lugar. In fact, many Republicans might consider his nomination something of a provocation.

Another Republican worth considering would be former U.S. Trade Representative, former Deputy Secretary of State, and former World Bank President Robert Zoellick, despite his brief association in 1998 with the Project for the New American Century urging the U.S. to adopt regime change in Iraq as its official policy. Aside from that lapse, I have seen virtually no evidence (does anyone have some?) that Zoellick has neo-conservative sympathies. Indeed, neo-cons and aggressive nationalists like John Bolton were pretty upset when Romney appointed Zoellick the head of his transition team. I would wager that Zoellick may have played an important role in persuading Romney to substantially reduce his hawkish rhetoric and stress his agreement with Obama on any number of foreign-policy issues during the third presidential debate. (See Jon Stewart’s hilarious rendition here.)

A protege of Baker during the George H.W. Bush administration, Zoellick is highly, highly competent, as shown by the speed with which he gained the confidence of a World Bank staff demoralized by the petty scandal,  seeming cluelessness, and general flakiness of his predecessor, Paul Wolfowitz, who shamelessly rewarded key officials in governments that support the U.S. Iraq invasion with top posts after he took over the Bank. Moreover, Zoellick’s experience at the Bank — dealing with a large multi-national and multi-cultural staff; visiting remote, impoverished regions all over the world; and raising money and other support from emerging economies eager to claim their place at the table — no doubt gave him insights into a far more complex and multi-polar world than most Republicans believe exists. Finally, his deep involvement in international finance and economics almost certainly gave him an appreciation of the limits of U.S. power and the urgency of reducing imperial overstretch of the last couple of decades or more.

Of course, Zoellick is anything but a backslapping pol and, unlike Lugar, Hagel, and Huntsman, has never even run for office. On the contrary, he’s a loner, arrogant, and doesn’t suffer fools gladly, but it may actually be healthy for Republican lawmakers to be on the receiving end of that.

Of course, there are others. On the foreign service professional side, see Robert Wright’s nomination of Deputy Secretary of State William Burns — as well as some of the possible downsides of Kerry — on the Atlantic’s website. If Obama inclines to an older crowd, then diplomat extraordinaire Thomas Pickering, who, among many, many other civic activities, chairs the International Crisis Group, would be fabulous. Pickering, who has served in many key embassies, was most notable for his service as Bush I’s UN ambassador during the Gulf War. He is also a core member of the Iran Project, which, in the eyes of Benjamin Netanyahu and the Israel lobby, probably makes him unacceptable. But Pickering, a former ambassador to Israel, did serve with distinction under Republican, as well as Democratic, administrations.

“U.S., allies in Gulf naval exercise as Israel, Iran face off”: Reuters reports on the mineclearing exercise scheduled to take place in the coming days in the Strait of Hormuz:

Publicly announced in July, the operation, known as IMCMEX-12, focuses on clearing mines that Tehran, or guerrilla groups, might deploy [...]]]> via Lobe Log

“U.S., allies in Gulf naval exercise as Israel, Iran face off”: Reuters reports on the mineclearing exercise scheduled to take place in the coming days in the Strait of Hormuz:

Publicly announced in July, the operation, known as IMCMEX-12, focuses on clearing mines that Tehran, or guerrilla groups, might deploy to disrupt tanker traffic, notably in the Strait of Hormuz, between Iran and the Arabian peninsula.

…. However, it was a clearly deliberate demonstration of the determination on the part of a broad coalition of states to counter any attempt Iran might make to disrupt Gulf shipping in response to an Israeli or U.S. strike on its nuclear facilities – a form of retaliation Iran has repeatedly threatened.

“Israeli PM makes appeal to US voters: Elect president willing to draw ‘red line’ with Iran”: Though some commentators judged that Netanyahu’s Meet the Press appearance was meant to dissociate himself from Republican criticism of the Obama Administration, the Associated Press did not accept that Netanyahu’s appearance was aimed at smoothing over the animosity between him and the president:

His remarks were an impassioned election-season plea from a world leader who insists he doesn’t want to insert himself into U.S. politics and hasn’t endorsed either candidate. But visibly frustrated by U.S. policy under President Barack Obama, the hawkish Israeli leader took advantage of the week’s focus on unrest across the Muslim world and America’s time-honored tradition of the Sunday television talk shows to appeal to Americans headed to the polls in less than two months.

Ali Gharib writes at the Daily Beast that with this appearance, Netanyahu is still trying to force the US to accept his definition of a “red line”:

This flap has not been about imposing a red line, but about shifting it—from actual weapons production to the capability to produce weapons—something elucidated even in the pages of the neoconservative Weekly Standard. Meet the Press host David Gregory asked U.S. Ambassador to the UN Susan Rice about it. Why, in an otherwise tough interview, he didn’t ask Netanyahu to expound the distinction is beyond me.

“Ambassador Susan Rice: U.S. Not ‘Impotent’ in Muslim World”: The US Ambassador to the UN told ABC’s Jake Tapper that the protests in Libya and other Muslims countries such as Egypt, Sudan and Yemen, were not evidence of a US decline in influence in these states:

I [Tapper] … asked Rice, “President Obama pledged to repair America’s relationships with the Muslim world. Why does the U.S. seem so impotent? And why is the U.S. even less popular today in some of these Muslim and Arab countries than it was four years ago?”

“We’re not impotent, we’re not even less popular, to challenge that assessment,” Rice said in response. “What happened this week in Cairo, in Benghazi and many other parts of the region was a result, a direct result, of a heinous and offensive video that was widely disseminated, that the U.S. government had nothing to do with, which we have made clear is reprehensible and disgusting.”

Rice further denied that the embassy storming in Libya was pre-planned to coincide with the 9/11 anniversary, a point which the Washington Post says contradicts Libyan claims.

“Revolutionary Guard Chief Holds Press Conference”: Al-Monitor runs a summary translation of remarks made by Major General Mohammad Ali Jafari of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) in a widely-publicized Tehran speech. Jafari discussed the prescence of Iranian advisors in Syria but avoided making a firm commitment to the military defense of Assad’s government:

Regarding Syria, Jafari made a number of revealing comments. He said, “everyone knows the corps (sepah) had and has a unit by the name of the Islamic Movements, formed to help the oppressed and export the revolution, and which works in this direction. From the time the Qods force was formed, the goal of this force was the defence of innocent nations, particularly Muslims. A number of the Qods forces are present in Syria, but this isn’t the same as a military presence in this country.”

He continued, “if we compare the presence with Arab and non-Arab countries we will see that Iran doesn’t have such a presence. We are helping intellectually and advising Syria as a resistance group, as the Supreme Leader also indicated and Iran is proud of this issue and the help it is providing for it. The corps will partake in any kind of intellectual assistance or even economic support, but it does not have a military presence and this is at a point where some countries are not refraining from terror[ism] in this country. We of course forcefully condemn this matter, and don’t accept it.”

When Jafari was asked whether Iran would support Syria militarily in the event of a military attack, given the security agreement between the two countries he replied: “this issue depends of the circumstances. I can now say with assurance in the event of a military attack against Syria, whether Iran will also support militarily is unclear, and it completely depends on the circumstances.”

“The Innocence Protests Expose Deeper Tensions in Yemen”: TIME provides some context for the storming of the US embassy in Yemen, a country where the US (alongside Saudi Arabia) is participating in a Yemeni government counterinsurgency campaign, which is highly reliant on drone strikes, against Yemeni Islamists and elements of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP):

It would be naive to think that Thursday’s infiltration and wholesale destruction of one of the most, if not the most, highly secured buildings in the country was the product of a few hundred angry protesters. A fuller explanation seems to lie in the capital’s tense environment, where rival elites are jockeying for power in an uncertain political landscape.

…. On the eve of the U.S. embassy attack, the President dismissed stalwart Saleh loyalist Major General Abdul Wahab al-Anesi from his powerful posts as director of the Presidential Office and chairman of the National Security Bureau, as well as sacked four pro-Saleh governors across the country.

The following morning, CSF (Central Security Force) forces under the command of Saleh’s nephew Yahya were pictured at a checkpoint outside the embassy signaling the mob of angry protesters to enter the premises. Video footage of the waning moments of the embassy attack showed exhilarated rioters embracing a CSF soldier before sprinting out of the compound.

Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi’s statement yesterday that the Islamic Republic is prepared to host talks between Bashar Al Assad’s government and the opposition should be regarded as an indication of Tehran’s inability to influence events in Syria. His public declaration was more like a futile public relations [...]]]> via Lobe Log

Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi’s statement yesterday that the Islamic Republic is prepared to host talks between Bashar Al Assad’s government and the opposition should be regarded as an indication of Tehran’s inability to influence events in Syria. His public declaration was more like a futile public relations effort to sell Iran’s potential as a constructive regional player than a plan offered with any hope of its acceptance.

It is worth remembering that Salehi’s words come after calls from Russia and Kofi Annan for Iran to be included in Syrian crisis resolution efforts, followed by the Obama Administration’s categorical rejection of such an inclusion. Iran is apparently part of the problem and hence cannot be part of the solution. Susan Rice, the US ambassador to the United Nations, said yesterday that Iran “is supporting, aiding and abetting the Assad regime materially and in many other ways” and that “it has shown no readiness to contribute constructively.”

Exactly why Iran is distinguished from Russia regarding the distribution of material aid to the Syrian regime is not clear. One reason for the singling out of Iran could be because it is not a member of the UN Security Council. Or, it may be that the regional and international struggle over the fate of Syria is not geared towards delinking that country from Russia but rather about breaking its alliance with Iran. Iran cannot be permitted to take part in a process wherein the intention of several participants is to weaken its regional position.

But does Iran have an independent and coherent strategy for changing the calculations of the US and regional players like Saudi Arabia and Turkey? Or, for that matter, does Iran have a strategy to deal with the deteriorating situation in Syria? Not really!

Recent statements and slight shifts from Tehran suggest that Iran is towing the Russian line. In fact, Salehi’s offer of facilitating dialogue comes just a few days after Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov once again called on the Syrian government and all of the opposition groups to embark on a dialogue.

Iran also seems to have absorbed Moscow’s interpretation of the June 30^th Geneva agreement regarding a Syrian political transition based on “mutual consent.” While for the Syrian National Council and Washington the first step of such a transition requires Assad’s departure, Tehran, like Moscow, wants Assad’s fate to be on the negotiating table. This implies that if there is a Russian decision to lean on Assad more forcefully, regardless of whether it will work or not, Tehran will follow.

Like other countries with a stake in Syria’s future, Iran is now faced with an ally that’s essentially in the throes of what will likely be a long, drawn out and worsening civil war. Various voices are warning about what could lie head. The prospect of Syria repeating the gruesome Algerian civil war of the 1990s has been raised, while for Mohammad Ali Sobhani, Iran’s former ambassador to Lebanon, the fear is more about Syria’s disintegration along the lines of the former Yugoslavia. Others worry about a spill over into and further destabilization of Iraq, particularly into the adjacent Iraqi provinces of Anbar and Ninewa. But expressions of fear do not make up for the lack of a visionary policy.

The Iranian government is undoubtedly aware that Syria is in a mess. But in the coming months expect Iran’s response to be more reactive than proactive despite proclamations and posturing that suggest otherwise.